If 2015 was anything, it was perhaps the year of “too much.” Everywhere we turned, there seemed to be a surplus of stimulation, some desired, most unnerving: too much TV, too much violence, too much of everything good and bad. But the films went somewhere far more interesting. More formally audacious, more intentionally inclusive, more interested than ever in redefining […]
Rod Bastanmehr
From England with Love: Lois & the Love
Lois & The Love are devoted to a certain kind of extreme―they want to make work that makes you feel, and maybe even makes you go grab a guitar and make a band of your own. The London-bred foursome released their debut album, Love Is Louder, in the summer of 2014, and with the LP, they helped prove that during […]
Fifteen Million Minutes: On Kim Kardashian’s Selfish
To say that Kim Kardashian divides the public is both understatement and overstatement. She herself actively does nothing; it’s the public that tears itself apart. The most maddening of conundrums are the ones that don’t have a clear beginning or end. When it comes to the Kardashians, it feels as if we’re stuck in an eternal middle act—I can hardly […]
Some New World Order for you to Observe: On Furious 7 and the State of Things
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t’s hard to believe that it’s been fourteen years since we first saw Paul Walker and Vin Diesel ride or die and wax poetic on the nature of honor. 2001’s The Fast and the Furious was fun, but it was dumb fun. If you’d have told me that I’d be in a theatre seven films later, watching almost everyone from […]
On Macklemore, Rap Grammys and How We Misconstrue White Privilege
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]usic’s Biggest Night was last night—a curious phrase to be throwing around the first month of the year, considering that it implies that from here on out, 2014 is Music’s never-ending Sunday. And surely by now you’ve heard that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis—the former, a white rapper who looks a little bit like a squash; the latter, the most timid […]